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Cloud Music Sniper Grabs Your “Offline” Google Music Collection and Makes It Available to Other Music Apps

One of the biggest irritations when it comes to Google Music has been the fact that the service has not been opened up so that other music players can take advantage of it. Whether you are streaming content or holding it offline for connection-less consumption, you are forced to use the Google Music player. It’s probably a DRM or security thing, but we really wish there could be a way to at least stream your music through another music app.

With that said, an app called Cloud Music Sniper is bit of a step in that direction. Cloud Music Sniper allows you to grab all of your offline cached Google Music and convert it over so that other music apps can access it. From what we understand though, this will essentially create two identical music folders (one cached folder and one sniped folder), so you will want to remove your offline cached copy through Google Music once you have sniped to free up space.

So it doesn’t address streaming into other apps, but it does give you somewhat of an option if you are on the go and need to have your music collection available.

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I never said anything about not using File Explorer for file management. I said nobody wants to manage their *music library* with File Explorer.
And 5-15 files? I have 8,882 songs in my Google Music library, and since they obviously won’t all fit in the offline cache, I have a dynamic playlist that I sync for offline use. This playlist contains over 200 songs, and since I change it based on what I’m in the mood for, the contents change. So managing this with a file manager would simply be ridiculous.

Ken Kyger

the id3 doesnt remain. pull it off your sd and try to play it on your desktop.

Uberblade

You can download your music to PC and transfer it back to your phone as a straight up mp3. I’ve been listening to my entire music library with power amp since Christmas.

“the service has not been opened up so that other music players can take advantage of it”
– What cloud music service has?

usnmustanger

Irrelevant. We’re not talking about any other music services. Only Google’s. That’s what this app is for.

usnmustanger

Several of you a bit confused, or are completely missing the point. So here’s what the big deal is about this app:
While the Google Music app DOES let you download your music for offline use, that cached music is available ONLY to the Google Music player. It’s stored in a proprietary database that isn’t readable by other media apps. So if you want to use, say, PowerAmp (which is far, FAR better music app than Google Music app) to listen to music from your Google Music library, you’re S.O.L. This app makes that cached music available to any media player on your phone.And for you “but it’s in the cloud, why do I need to make it available offline” guys, kudos to you for living/working in an area where you always have cellular coverage or wifi, but not all of us do. So streaming from the cloud isn’t always an option, so offline access is a must-have.It’s not alot of trouble just to “press play” as someone said. It’s dead simple to use, and it works well for its intended purpose.

Ken Kyger

you mind if i use that in the market description? you put it perfectly.

usnmustanger

Sure.

GazaIan

It’s not proprietary at all. You can go into you /sdcard/Android/data/com.music.google (I don’t remember if that is the exact directory), and all your songs will be right there, stored in MP3 formate. The file name will be changed to a 3 digit number but the ID3 tag data should remain. You can play that in any music player. This app is really just charging you for what people are too lazy to do in a file explorer.

usnmustanger

Right. Because that’s what we want showing up in our PowerAmp library–a bunch of audio files with 3-number names, and no artist/album/artwork information in one big folder labeled “Unknown”. Makes perfect sense. I just tried it, and that’s what it looks like. I couldn’t even get Winamp to see the media buried in that folder.
It’s proprietary in the sense that Google has gone through considerable lengths to prevent other media players from having full access to the offline music and its associated info. Besides, who in the hell uses File Explorer to manage their music library? WTF? Lazy? No, not lazy–normal.

Even if what you said was true for everyone (which it’s not), heaven forbid someone charge for–GASP!–convenience! Ever eat fast food? Ever buy quick meals at the grocery store? Ever use a microwave? Do you grow, harvest, roast, and grind your own coffee? Jeez, I could go on and on, but mercifully, I won’t. You act like it’s a big deal to pay a paltry sum for a little convenience, yet, unless you’re Amish, I’m pretty certain you do this every single day, many times a day. Stop being so elitist. It only makes you look foolish.

Ken Kyger

no. the id3 tag doesnt remain. there is no embedded id3 information. google stores all of that on their servers and uses the track id to fetch the rest of the info

GazaIan

That’s weird then, the music data from the ID3 is shown in MIUI’s music player o.O

Ken Kyger

very much doubt that. unless you move the ####.mp3 files to the sdcard, your music player wont even see them, much less get id3 info from a stripped file.

http://twitter.com/strifejester Justin Ellenbecker

No you are confused you can get the music so the only time this makes sense is if you buy a new song on your device and want it in poweramp instantly once it’s cached. But that still seems like a waste of 2 dollars to me. There is no song that important that i need to have paid extra to do this. Plus if you can’t stream guess what you can’t get it out of your cache. I am not a huge fan of listening to music on my cellphone or any device except in my car so maybe I am missing something but The google app on the PC lets you download MP3s I think that is what you are missing there is more functionality to google music than jsut offline use on the device.

usnmustanger

No, I’m not confused. Go ahead and try it–make some of your Google music available offline and try to play it in another media player. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Not so nice, is it? Unless you like looking at a bunch of mp3’s labeled ####.mp3 by Unknown Artist on Unknown Album. But hey, maybe you’re into that sort of thing. A bit too masochistic for me.
And again, you completely missed the mark with your comment stating “if you can’t stream, you can’t get it out of your cache.” I’m not even sure what you’re actually trying to say. You don’t have to have connectivity to access your sdcard. Even in airplane mode, with zero connectivity, I can pull songs out of the cache, which is stored locally on the sdcard, all day long.
Look guys, if you don’t want to use it, don’t buy it. It’s that simple. But this app does serve a useful purpose, and it does it well. Just ask the guys over at RootzWiki who have reviewed this app quite favorably TWICE now.

camillt

Justin, DoubleTwist will use cached or pinned Goggle Music files directly from their download location.

I’m not sure if this is a result of MIUI, or UberMusic, but this just will not work for me. I’ve done the steps, repeatedly, and within the app it looks like everything has taken … but the songs / artists / albums etc don’t show.

I’m assuming, if this isn’t a user or ID10T error, that it’s not UberMusic as the native MIUI music app isn’t showing these either.

Anyone with MIUI successfully using this? I’m getting the impression it has to be something else, something not ROM dependant, preventing this.

Flyehard

Does anyone know why google music won’t show cover art that i’ve downloaded? I just got the Droid razr maxx and this is really annoying.

Rob Haney

Another app that does this is “Google Music Importer” by Sapien Mobile. I have it installed on my device (bought it from the Market for $2 a month or so ago.) and now it seems to be MIA on the Market. Says it isn’t compatible with my device anymore. I love it so I hope whatever is wrong with it gets fixed. Don’t want to have to buy another app to replace it.

get into recovery and wipe cache, NOT FACTORY RESET.
Usually solves problems like those.

http://www.facebook.com/joseph.a.yager Joseph A. Yager

Anybody else feel like this is way to much work just to hit “play” in another music app?

http://www.facebook.com/2cheezy4u Eric Chee

This is a comment i found on rootzwiki that i thought was helpful to further explain when you would use this:

”
you dont have to make everything available offline. lemme give an example of a time when this is useful.

you have music on your gmusic that you dont on your phone. you paid for some new music player app, and you want to use that one to play all your music, but some of it is ONLY on the cloud. fire up gmusic, make those songs available offline, and run the sniper app. then play those songs on your fancy new paid music app.

or!

your running low on battery, cant continue streaming your music. make it offline, run the app, and bam. its local, with all your track info still there.

theres lots of uses for this app. its not meant to replace gmusic, just supplement it.”
–
Ken Kyger

http://twitter.com/strifejester Justin Ellenbecker

Or you could just not pay 2 dollars and use the music manager to download yoru music and move it to your phone yourself.

http://twitter.com/QSMinSD Q

Does this app get keep the ID3 tags? I noticed that when I played cached Google Music MP3s, all the song info has been stripped and the filenames have been converted to some numeric format.

Ken Kyger

yes it does.

James

Just asking but can someone explain why does iOS have the GMusic app that allows streaming of Google Music through their app but there is nothing like that on Android?

James

I mean other than using Google Music of course. There is no 3rd party app but with GMusic, iOS seems to allow this.

Anonymous

If i remember correctly, that app is a skin for the mobile web version.

http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

I’m confused by this, Google Music allows you to stream music from the app on Android.

http://www.facebook.com/TJHRULZ tjhrulz

I just use the Google Music app, it works and looks like the rest of ICS, good enough for me

http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

Yeah I don’t understand the need to pay for this app, when you can export your entire Google Music library straight from the web interface and then just transfer it to your phone? I guess I am just not the target demographic. Keep at it r2doesInc.

http://www.facebook.com/TJHRULZ tjhrulz

Yeah that what I dont get if you want it in the cloud their app works just fine, although I would agree opening up some API’s so dev can use it would be nice. But they are giving us this great feature for free, I have no issue using the perfectly well working and as many features as I need. Many people have made addons to GM that give you many extra features to, just use googles app already.

http://twitter.com/savagejeep Chris S

What sort of add ons? Where to get them/look?

http://www.facebook.com/TJHRULZ tjhrulz

I have seen several while browsing in the market, mostly sound balance bass boosters things like that. Look around for a bit

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